Some iPad notes:

Keyboard

My first experience using a touch based, software keyboard was the iPhone. At first it was odd not feeling the keys under my fingers but i soon got used to it. The main thing everyone says about the iPhone Keyboard is that you need to trust it and just keep going. Learning this is like learning very counter intuitive, but it works and eventually you can get very quick at typing—possibly even more so than on BlackBerry devices as someone once blogged.

The iPad is a little different. Instead of learning from scratch (due to the size of the iPhone screen) you feel that the landscape keyboard is the same as a standard MacBook keyboard and so old reflexes and muscle memories can become a nuisance.

There are three big issues I find when typing on the iPad; lazy finger, special characters, and going too fast.

Lazy finger is simply that I never previously noticed how much I tend to allow my right pinkie to rest on the keyboard. On a touch keyboard that will have disastrous consequences (new lines, caps, and completely inappropriate words).

The same goes for special characters. I often find myself trying to type the apostrophe when I get flowing which again tends to result in a return instead. Any which way it’s not good. The same rule applies here as applies on the iPhone though—trust the software and keep going. The other side of the characters issue is simply typing in markdown. It’s not too painful, since most markdown is simply plain text, but it can become tiresome changing to the second character pallet after a while. Writer has added an extra line to the iPad keyboard which id very handy. I’d like to see this kind of thing added to a markdown editor with those characters instead.

As a side note: the iPad keyboard auto-correction does seem a little less predictable than the iPhones, especially with device names (proper case in iPad for example works 50% of the time only) and I is often not capitalised by itself. The space bar is also a little more awkward I find (often typing a lower line letter instead).

The final part of the puzzle is simply trying to go too fast. I can certainly type faster on my MacBook Air keyboard than this iPad keyboard, but I’m getting there. There is certainly a danger of trying to run before you can walk here though, and it all stems from the same single issue:

It might be the size of a standard keyboard, but it’s not so learn new muscle memory and habits for it.

Orientation

I find the iPhone has a natural portrait orientation for my uses. It gets quite annoying when led in bed and the orientation freaks out. I was relived when the software lock button was added for that.

The iPad feels very different there though. Firstly, its size means it’s more difficult to accidentally change orientation, which is brilliant. Then I also find I want to change orientation more.

I like certain things landscape, and some portrait. For example, my favourite app is Twitter and due to it’s column view style it just begs to be used in landscape or it feels very odd. Equally, I find the landscape keyboard much quicker/easier to type on.

Other things are obviously better in portrait however, like reading long documents or web pages. Instapaper is a portrait must.

I have noticed that while reading long articles in portrait view however, I rarely get more than 2/3 down the screen before scrolling. That seems a little counterintuitive but also quite natural.

The iPad is a fantastic device, but in many ways it has to be remembered that it’s neither a laptop, nor an iPhone because old habits die hard.